Reparations

Historical Precedents for the Modern Debate

The notion of reparations for slavery has a long history. Even before slavery was abolished, some people recognized that some sort of compensation would be necessary to pay back enslaved African Americans for their labor and their suffering. While these sentiments were relatively common and took many forms, the first concrete effort to compensate newly freed blacks for their toil was attempted near the end of the Civil War in 1865. In January of that year, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman issued an order setting aside forty one-acre sections of land on the Sea Islands off the Georgia and South Carolina coasts for settlement by African American families. These grants of land were taken away by President Andrew Johnson later that same year, and most of the area in question was restored to its previous white owners.

This entire episode acquired a great deal of significance as rumors circulated that the federal government planned to grant former slaves “forty acres and a mule.” The statement “forty acres and a mule” came to symbolize the betrayal and abandonment felt by African Americans after emancipation. For some, it continues to symbolize such feelings, and it also represents a broken promise on the part of the federal government to compensate slaves for their labor.

The most notable early Republican leader to support reparations was Thaddeus Stevens, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. In 1867, Stevens requested support for a reparations bill before Congress, which called on the United States to provide each freedman with “forty acres and a mule.” Despite Stevens's efforts, this and other reparations bills were vetoed by President Andrew Johnson, and no property was ever granted to African Americans to aid their transition after slavery. In recent years, however, the issue of black reparations has gained support and media attention.

In the years that followed 1867, various plans were offered as a way to compensate former slaves, but these plans never materialized. As white supremacy hardened toward the turn of the twentieth century, slave reparations were far from a popular notion. During this period, the most significant effort on the part of African Americans to lobby the federal government for reparations was undertaken by the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, centered in Nashville, Tennessee, and headed by an African American woman, Callie House.

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